Son Talks About Bruton Smith's #NASCAR Contributions

(L-R) Marcus Smith and his father, Bruton Smith, watch as NASCAR Sprint Cup
Series driver, Brad Keselowski, speaks during the NASCAR Hall of Fame
Induction Ceremony on January 23, 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
 9Photo by Streeter Lecka/NASCAR via Getty Images 0

Bruton Smith has meant so much to the sport known as NASCAR.  He has  helped the sport grow more anyone else.  Bruton was represented at NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on January 23, 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina by his son Marcus Smith

The younger Smith is president and CEO of Speedway Motorsports and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

You know, at dinner the other night, we had dinner in the Hall of Honor on Wednesday night I think it was, Thursday night, and it was really special. We had at the table Darrell Waltrip was there, Mike Helton was there, Winston joined us, as well, and it was a lot of fun just to tell stories.

A few of the stories I had -- I knew about, and a few of the stories I didn't know about, and I was telling Karen and others earlier today that my dad has so many stories, there are lots that I have not heard. When we go to dinner or we go to lunch, and if y'all were there with us, he'd have something that would spur on his memory of another story that I hadn't heard, and I just love it. Every once in a while I'll say, hey, you haven't told me that one.

So the other night he told a story of driving cars. Darrell asked him, Bruton, you drove races but did you ever win one? And he said, oh, yeah, I won a race, won a few of them, but my favorite one was such-and-such, and he told a story about driving hard and running a fellow race car driver kind of up in the marbles and winning the race. He told another story promoting a race and it only got to halfway and got halfway and normally halfway you call the race, but he decided it was only half of a race, so he got half of the trophy and took it to the shop and cut it in half and paid the driver half the purse and gave him half the trophy. Later came back and ran that race, and it worked out. Actually the same driver won the other half.

So we're just really proud of my dad. He loves his family and his friends and his work and the people that he works with are his friends. All of our general managers of each speedway were here today. People from Sonic Automotive, our sister company, friends from all around came in to be part of the weekend, and had a great time with it.-Marcus Smith